


Tango Apocalypto

by QuillHeart



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Character Study, F/M, Gen, Kray's public vs private persona, and trying to save the whales at the end of the world, get yo man Biar, surprisingly soft, two grown-ass adults flirting with each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-18
Updated: 2020-01-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:53:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22305223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QuillHeart/pseuds/QuillHeart
Summary: Kray and Biar talk about the tragic but quirky arc that is human life on the ride back from awarding Galo his medal of heroism, as well as all the things still left to do to save the world.
Relationships: Biar Colossus/Kray Foresight, Kray Foresight & Galo Thymos
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Tango Apocalypto

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little fic on the theme of Kray/Biar and Kray's relationship with Galo as the end of the world looms. Excuse me while I windsurf this ship all by myself. c:
> 
> Hopefully, there will be a sequel soon with filthy medical experimentation Lio whump and some sexretary fun with Biar as the come-down. <3

Kray could still feel the coarse texture of the dress uniform under his fingertips. Could still see the glint of brass catching the sun as he pinned the medal through the crisp weave. And above that—the tanned skin and smiling face of a young man with blue hair and even bluer eyes. He shone like the sun and the sky all around them, condensed into human form.

Shone, like the humanity he had long ago left behind.

Kray Foresight didn’t deserve that smile, so all he did was force a smile that felt more like a threat and patted Galo’s shoulder.

That shoulder had become so strong and thick from the tender sapling it once was. Galo straightened up even more under the attention, muscles flexing. It didn’t even take Kray moving aside to set those proud blue eyes out onto the crowd, and Kray let him have the glory, let him soak up the reflected radiance he was giving off.

Kray’s speech was already done. All there was left to do was clap and head off. It was a rather impromptu event all told, somewhat different from the type of charity events he was used to wasting time on, so even for Kray the event felt a bit short. It was little more than a publicity stunt for the papers on the stairs of BR Station 3 and a thank-you to its team, but it really did feel in the civilian crowd that’d gathered that some kind of page was turning in the city’s book, and Kray let himself get lost in it. He let himself pretend, for just a few minutes, that he was just a normal governor, the world wasn't ending, and there weren't ongoing atrocities in the basement of city hall.

The Governor exited the stage one way and its freshly-minted hero went the other, lost to the press contingent. It was a relief to have them chase someone else for once, frankly, but there was also a kind of loneliness in not having Galo's eager heart trail after him, too.

Kray gazed over his shoulder all of once, to watch the blue-haired goofball smiling so hugely, his arm around some coworker and the rest smiling and jibing and posing for the papers. But singular though it may have been, it was also a gaze that lingered.

Kray remembered being like that, once. With his teammates in the lab, or even earlier: in the campus-wide, weekend-long radio trivia event that the honors dorm on his campus had a tendency to win. That trophy, that front-page photo…it still felt sweeter than all the others that’d been collected about him in Biar’s scrapbook over the years.

“How’s the collection of human knowledge going?” he asked the woman once they got in the luxury car, a twinge of regret thrumming to life at the idea of not taking Galo and all his teammates out to lunch.

It was a nice idea, but it wasn’t like it was something he could really _afford_ to do. He didn’t have the time, since the core was heating faster than expected, not to mention the sheer risk of being around so many firefighters whose loyalty lie somewhere other than the city flag.

He’d long ago mastered staying cool in polite political settings, but he didn’t much hang out with regular people anymore, and certainly not in groups. The energy was…intoxicating. The…proximity, too. It made the voices of the fire come alive, want to touch and meld and ignite with other human fires, want to play and dance and celebrate with them by showing off into the air.

It was a deliriously happy thought, but he knew it was a trick, an illusion. It would only end in people dying, to give in to thoughts like that. Not to mention the end of all of his carefully crafted plans. He hadn’t started down the road to hell just to get stuck in purgatory at the eleventh hour.

Why the voices in his mind thought of people as flames, though, he wasn’t sure, but he supposed there was something to the grand scheme of the universe in seeing people’s lives as candle flames. The poets of the past certainly had. So maybe it was just the mad part of his brain connecting to the old literature he’d grown up with, twisting all his staple comforts.

Either way, in his cold corner of the limousine, Biar Colossus sat opposite, charcoal-gray skirt-suit-clad-form tucked up prim and tight from bun to heels as always. A digital tablet cast a bluish glow upon her face, held out in front of her like a book. She swiped up it like some modern version of a tea ceremony, one long finger stroke at a time.

In the back of Kray’s mind, there came the sound of crackling fire. He sighed audibly, and was a little alarmed with how hot the breath was. His assistant, either not noticing or not caring, continued her maneuvers, never looking at him.

“We’ve got the Main Library’s Compendium of Necessary Information digitized by now, and all the other books we’d wanted. It’s the human stories that are a bit of an issue. In order to keep people from questioning the project, we haven’t been able to get as many storytellers on it as we wanted.”

“And the Noah Project components?”

“We’ve got about 85% of the species we’d hoped for.”

“Which ones are problematic?”

“The ones that nobody can find since the Great World Burn, and most of the aquatic or amphibious ones.”

“Ah.” He shook his head, the chill of that statement setting the flames out of his core and back down to the level of his shoes for a while. “Pulling that off always _was_ going to be a major issue.”

Luckily, the city aquarium was within the Parnassus’s boundaries, as was part of the fish hatchery. Still, having enough water to simply _hold_ a whale and its food supply for a year was a bit of an issue, and would be an ultra-last-minute preparation at the best of estimates. He hated to think of it, but with the way things were going, the megafauna on the planet might be relegated to DNA tubes and distant memories. 

“And the plant species?”

“Doing well there. At 95 percent, with 100 percent of target domesticated crops and flowers, including heritage varieties. What’s left is in the same boat as the previous group—mostly wild, rare, or hard to keep alive in captivity. _But,_ as per your request, we even have some Giant Redwood and Sequoia seedlings going.”

“Excellent.” If he couldn’t save the whales, he could at least save the massive and long-lived trees. He hoped they could find the right environment to plant one when they landed, and have it be a living relic of the founding of humanity, a semi-religious marker of what had been destroyed and what needed to be preserved, concept or otherwise, in their new homeland. “In that case, concentrate on rounding up frozen fish egg cells for the first hatchery stocks and the related plant-germ material for terraforming their habitats.”

“Yessir.” She marked a few things, typed a few words. When all was done, she set the thing on her lap like a clipboard and stared straight ahead. When Kray didn’t say anything, she checked over at him. “Anything else for the duration of the ride?”

Kray smirked, a soft, defeated sound, and stared at the space between his feet.

Biar was a pretty woman. A refined, confident, professional woman who was dressed to the nines every day, not a hair out of place, and never a moment late. He’d seen her a few times at formal events, when he had to bring someone female and he didn’t want anything complicated, and even that she did well. She wasn’t entirely to his taste, but he couldn’t deny she was what he _needed_ sometimes. 

Still, times like this, when he sat quietly in the back of this car being driven around the city, a frigid but beautiful woman by his side at his beck and call, and the fingers of a mechanical hand threaded through his flesh-and-blood ones as he held them loosely between his knees, he couldn’t help but think about how much things had changed—and at the same time, how much a few things had stubbornly remained the same.

Sometimes, he felt just like a stupid college student again, unkempt and fumbling and stabbed right in the heart with certain feelings.

Kray opened his flesh hand and flexed it, feeling the coarse grains of Galo’s navy-blue uniform, and the muscle underneath, against his skin. How in the world had it been almost twenty years since that boy had come into his life? How had he managed to _thrive_ , so very _vividly,_ right under Kray’s purposefully distant nose?

Galo’s radiant smile came to mind again—as did a furious jealousy. One that he simultaneously wanted to burn _out_ and burn _brightly_ in equal measure, and because he couldn’t do either, he couldn’t ever make it go away; in fact, each time it came back it did so more hotly. He had visions, sometimes, of strangling poor Galo, of burning him, of pining him down and suffocating him with smoke in his throat as he pleaded for his life.

But Kray didn’t know why he had such visions. They scared him; they hurt him. But he also _fed_ off them, all in turns, and the worst part about it was that he couldn’t tell anyone about it to dispel the evil energy. It made him sad more than anything, when it wasn’t making him go into a blind rage he could control only by feeling nothing at all, or maybe hurting people with cold, cruel words.

It was terrible, really, this urge to destroy the thing he should have cherished most. Burnish were truly monstrous creatures, if they were all like him.

And Galo—poor, simple Galo Thymos, his very first victim—continued to adore him in his ignorance.

“Why?” he asked Biar softly by way of the air. “Do I always feel so conflicted about him being happy?”

“Because he represents the good world you’re trying to save and can’t,” the woman beside him whispered. A slender hand snaked over his thigh, down into the heat that pooled on its inside. A crinkle of ironed fabric whispered, and then the sound of the leather seats creaking struck through the air. Biar’s dark, glossy lips caught the light going by overhead as she leaned near, as did her dark eyes. Kray’s gaze tracked up her arm to her face, catching on the plush mounds burgeoning against her shirt.

When he sucked in a breath, it was very hot, possibly even sparking in the back of his throat. But she planted her flag and devoured the captured kiss all the same.

“I’ll take your mind right off him, don’t you worry. You can’t afford any distractions, after all.”

Her chest pushed into his arm. Sadly, it was his plastic-and-metal one, so the only things he felt were ghost tingles when it moved. But it was still a beautiful sensation, when her slender arms wrapped around his massive shoulders.

“Then what do you call _you_ , hm?” he quipped, unlatching his seatbelt and leaning back a little to let her spread onto on more of him. Her far hand tangled in his hair, and he delighted, somewhere, at the golden strands she pulled out of place from their perfect public form.

“Oh that’s easy,” she chuckled, eyes going half lidded. He turned to accommodate her, and she draped over his nearer leg. “A loyal servant, ready to please her master.”

Kray chuckled, chagrined, even as the fire grew inside his belly, and spread out through everywhere she touched. “Is that so.”

“Mmm hmm~”

“Well, then the master must give her a task, mustn't he?”

“If he would be so kind~”

Kray’s own eyes narrowed with lust as a purr pulled out of the back of his throat. Big, thick fingers skirted over the crown of her head, descending into her bun. A few flicks later, and her hair tumbled down her back in a long, shining twist.

For a bit, he just stroked his hand through it, unwinding and fluffing the light strands. She lay on his chest, fingers threaded together and legs bent, twisting together at the ankle. She toed at a shoe, popping it half off. As the car gently turned a corner, Kray’s good hand settled on the back of her neck, drinking up the heat there, then slid down to her rump, pert and shapely beneath the suiting.

“Why do you always make me feel so human?” he sighed.

“Because you are,” she whispered back.

A spike of something dark and ugly lanced through him, molten hot, and Kray’s mechanical arm tightened into her side until she squeaked in pain. “I’m not,” he warned.

Biar’s feet twisted. Her shoe fell off her foot, and she tensed and writhed underneath him until he let go.

After a few seconds, she shivered and sighed, resting her head against his chest. He stroked down her back with his good arm. “Sorry,” he offered, voice back to normal.

“Don’t insult me,” she vowed lightly back at him, turning her head. She sought out his flesh hand and drew it to her. It was near as big as her whole head, but he let her manipulate it willingly. “You think I’d work with you if there wasn’t some sense of a human in there still?”

She kissed his palm, then the pads of his fingers, then his fingertips, one by one. He was engrossed in watching it, in the push and pull of seeing a woman so delicate and easy to burn put her skin, her very eyes, right next to the locus of his flame.

But that was exactly the kind of relationship they had. He and Biar both like being challenged, held to account—and being allowed to write their demons out on the body of the other, no matter how much it hurt.

“Sadly, the drive back isn’t near long enough for all the things I’d like to do to you this afternoon, and we don’t really have the time to extend this meeting, however pleasant, on such follies.”

"Alas," Biar's sultry voice lamented. "You would have made an excellent lunch."

Kray blushed and pretended not to. He went on tightly, “I’ve got some things to attend to with the new prisoners, unfortunately, that are really no place for a cultured lady like yourself.”

Biar drew a lazy circle on his chest. “Let me know if you need me to take notes.”

“Oh, I will need you. Just not anywhere near _them_.” He chuckled. “Wear something nice for me tonight, will you?”

“How’s schoolgirl sound?”

“Excellent. I might also take nurse from you.”

“I’ll bring them both.”

The governor hummed briefly, a pleased noise. Biar sat up, smoothing her hair back into place and pulling her shoe back on. Without even looking at him, she held out her hand, and Kray set the missing lavender hairpins into her palm. He smoothed over his jacket, and tried to get the one little lock of hair back in place.

After that, they turned to each other, inspecting. He pulled a tuft of lint off her shoulder, tugged her jacket down a bit. She smoothed over his capelet, drew down his sleeves. He was just about to turn back and put his seatbelt on again when, with a small smile, she leaned forward and tucked that errant lock of hair of his into place, hiding the pin just so.

He caught her hand before she could pull away, his fingers curling gently around the pad of her thumb. When his red eyes gazed into her own, she actually blushed. Kray smiled, one of his tender, human ones, that reminded her of the pictures of him from years ago, before all the atrocities had started.

They didn’t say anything after the look they shared, each politely separating to their own corners, own clipboards, own duties.

But Biar had to admit—lavender was a good color against his flaxen hair. She’d have to remember that, next time he needed an accent color for his white suits.


End file.
